LAST AUGUST I MET AN IMPALA
She went by Imp—a mercurial darling of a woman. I was engrossed in drunken conversation with a few fellow reporters in the cavern that is Grendel's. I was complaining, and rightfully so, that it was an awful lot of misery on my poor part to have had to break into the office of my ex-employer to gain the salary that was rightfully mine from a piece I had slaved away over.
"fabulous" drifted into me from my right. "never take no for an answer" and the hand on mine was like cocaine if it was more like alcohol.
What a lovely woman.
After a brief chat she insisted that I should speak to someone on the record who has a great desire to be interviewed fairly and accurately.
About a month later I was complaining to my fellows that she had never followed up and I was going out to commiserate about the injustice but they never showed.
Instead, some great get was absorbing the end of the bar I normally inhabit so I wedged myself in and attempted to hail a drink. We chatted, mostly me complaining about the lost interview, and then as it would happen, he was the same man I was promised that great interview with! Head of one of the greatest advertising agency ever known. Luck was certainly in my favor that day!
"I would like to complain as well, primarily. Do you have your pen? Or several?"
And he let out a boom of a snort, the sort that took a moment to translate.
"I've been too damnably successful. I worked tirelessly to innovate myself out of a job and now that it's come to fruition I'm so damnably bored. It's always something. Now I'm having an existential break between taking credit for the results of the automation or burning the whole system down just to have something to do."
I try to protest that that level of success should earn a vacation.
"Can't take a vacation from who you ARE. The last guy who held this office was the plague. He's out of business. No, no lazing about. There's no telling what might replace me, not even the plebeians want that gamble."
I'm not sure. "I'm sorry, I'm not sure..."
"Keep writing. Now I'm aware everyone wants a personal devil but that game has been up since newspapers. There's only so much to be squeezed out of individuals. They want what they don't have. They're impossibly lazy as a rule. They subsist on sugar and toxic drama. They refuse to take responsibility for anything and so live in denial and keep themselves miserable and unhappy for no damn reason whatsoever and at the expense of their fellow man for all eternity amen. That's not even me. But listen, it used to be that I at least got lip service. I got blame. I got named. 'Oh, the devil is upon us!'"
He made a great feigning gesture, I'm not sure what it was SUPPOSED to be but it looked something akin to drowning cat and his lolling eyes pulled the features back around with them he became wild and guffawed. It took the bubbles out of my beer which I was now partially wearing.
"Then it was games! The clever monkeys. There always were proselytizing glorious little sociopaths threatening people with ME of all things, and funneling the money out of lambs into their coffers and traps. I was an international symbol. And the stress and distrust and suicide they ground out did all the work for me. Tribalism is so wildly underrated. It's like automation cira 1800s. 1900s. Today. Can't beat it. Even the best of the saints couldn't combat it. It makes everyone except your abusers the enemy and thus exempts from your good duty. It grinds down it's constituents into fodder for hate. Can't beat it. 10/10.
Now these idiots are just calling EVERYTHING my work. It's over. I can smell it. You can't dilute your brand like that. These convoluted dip-shits have sold the game."
"I'm sorry, I really don't understand. Could you explain WHO the dip-shits are?"
"Oh, those same profiteers, this new generation just has no long game. They took all the low hanging fruit and now it's going to rot."
Something of a low whine came from his belly.
"Look, what I mean is that they're supposed to have a front. They're supposed to look like the good guys and only SECRETLY be horrid and toxic. If you got caught it was the end of your career. There was a SHOW. There were CONSEQUENCES. You could LOSE. Now they get caught doing all manner of sexual depravity and money laundering and ...making fake colleges? It's gotten to the point now where televangelists and prophets and politicians can be blatantly grifting out in the open. Be laid bare before the public as charlatans and they get MORE money from the marks. That means that the marks are IN ON IT. Now it's just devils taking from the imps and there's no profit for me in that.
If there's no opposition then the game is won. Now it's just watching them eat each other. Which is no fun for me. There was grace and subterfuge in the old courts. They had class. They really got into the spirit of the thing. They knew objectively they were doing very bad things and so they reveled in that dirtiness. Delicious. These bland bastards just collect money and buy sex. It's so boring! I'm so lonely! There's no imagination! No creativity! They used to turn themselves mad threading the moral needle of excuses. The Crusades! They SOLD INDULGENCES. I mean..."
The drowned cat from earlier ran back across his face.
Terrifying.
"Look, these guys used to start whole new countries! More than one of them advertised peace and everlasting love and then had them all off each other. The charisma! Now they all look like fat dumplings with bleached teeth. They can't keep their messaging straight. And the marks all KNOW they're frauds but they want the prestige of being in THAT cult. Absolute shame. No pride in the product. They'll have a cardboard cut-out for a leader next and you'll be able to buy one on QVC.
So I summarize my complaint as follows;
I've suffered a great injustice. The worst. I've never seen a worse injustice. I have won. I am surrounded by wicked fools.
I am only glad my Great Uncle Uta–napishti is not here to see this. I can hear him and Promethius laughing now. They were both ugly as sin, just so you know. Even for their day and age. I am glad they are not here to chortle at my face. My great failure. And they smelled of fish, the both of them! My shame...."
I was on my 5th beer at this point. I was still wearing some of that second and was in dire need of a very thorough bath. For not the first time in my life I swore I would buy a hot tub and use it as a great bath and fix the problem of doing laundry. Drying would be a challenge but I'm sure I could figure...
"ARE YOU EVEN PAYING ATTENTION"
I am now wearing the 5th beer.
"I'm recording this on my phone, sir, I assure you it will keep."
The drowned cat took another lap
"Oh HELL"
And I was glad to be alone.
The bartender waved at me as if sweeping me off so I'm inferring the tab was paid or else he was just too glad to be done with me.
Only because it is so profitable am I publishing this sham.
I assure you that whoever this ridiculous man was, he was primarily a good waste of my time and detergent.
G. Faust
The Disassociated Press
Above; CCTV of the alley behind Grendle's
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